Vishtaspa - in Greek and Roman Thought

In Greek and Roman Thought

The name 'Visthaspa' is 'Hystaspes' in the Greek and Latin texts of the Hellenistic era. Besides referring to historically attested persons named Vishtaspa, it was also applied to Zoroaster's patron, who the Greeks and Romans imagined to be a sage of great antiquity, and the putative author of a set of prophecies written under his name. Although the works attributed to Pseudo-Hystaspes draw on real Zoroastrian sources, the Greek and Roman portraits of his person are just as fanciful as those of the other two les Mages hellénisés, Pseudo-Zoroaster and Pseudo-Ostanes. While Pseudo-Zoroaster was identified as the "inventor" of astrology, and Pseudo-Ostanes was imagined to be a master sorcerer, Pseudo-Hystaspes seems to have been stereotyped as an apocalyptic prophet.

None of the works attributed to him are still extant, but quotations and references have survived in the works of others, especially in those of two early Christian writers – Justin Martyr (ca. 100 CE) in Samaria and the mid-3rd century Lactantius in North Africa – who drew on them by way of confirmation that what themselves held to be revealed truth had already been uttered. Only one of these pseudepigraphic works – referred to as the Book of Hystaspes or the Oracles of Hystaspes or just Hystaspes – is known by name. This work (or set of works) of the first century BCE is referred to by Lactantius, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Lydus, and Aristokritos, all of whom describe it as foretelling the downfall of the Roman empire, the return of rule to the east, and of the coming of the saviour.

Lactantius provides a detailed summary of the Oracles of Hystaspes in his Divinae Institutiones (Book VII, from the end of chapter 15 through chapter 19). It begins with Hystaspes awaking from a dream, and needing to have it interpreted for him. This is duly accomplished by a young boy, "here representing, according to convention, the openness of youth and innocent to divine visitations." As interpreted by the boy, the dream "predicts" the iniquity of the last age, and the impending destruction of the wicked by fire. The divine fire will burn both the righteous and the wicked, but only the wicked will be hurt and neither will be destroyed. During the eschatological inferno, the "followers of truth" will separate themselves from the wicked and ascend a mountain. The evil king who dominates the world will be angered on hearing this, and he will resolve to encircle the mountain with his army. The righteous implore to "Jupiter", who sends them a saviour, who will descend from heaven accompanied by angels and before him a flaming sword. Hystaspes "prophesies" that the wicked king (i.e. the Roman emperor) will survive the destruction of his armies, but will lose power. It was "presumably" the prophecy of the destruction of a victorious power (i.e. the Roman empire) that caused the work to be proscribed by Rome; according to Justin Martyr (Apologia, I.44.12), reading the work was punishable by death.

Unlike the works attributed to the other two les Mages hellénisés, the Oracles of Hystaspes was apparently based on the genuine Zoroastrian myths, and "the argument for ultimate magian composition is a strong one. As prophecies they have a political context, a function, and a focus which radically distinguish them from the philosophical and encyclopedic wisdom of the other pseudepigrapha." Although "rophecies of woes and iniquities in the last age are alien to orthodox Zoroastrianism", there was probably a growth of Zoroastrian literature in the late fourth-early third centuries denouncing the evils of the Hellenistic age, and offering hope of the coming kingdom of Ahura Mazda.

The Greco-Roman obsession with Zoroaster as the "inventor" of astrology also influenced the image of Hystaspes. So for example in Lydus' On the months (de Mensibus II.4), which credits "the Chaldeans in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes and the Egyptians" for the creation of the seven-day week after the number of planets.

The fourth century Ammianus Marcellinus (xxvi.6.32) identifies Zoroaster's patron with another Vishtaspa, the (late-6th century BCE) father of Darius I. The sixth century Agathias was more ambivalent, observing that it wasn't clear to him whether the name of Zoroaster's patron referred to the father of Darius or to another Hystaspes (ii.24). As with the medieval Zoroastrian chronology that identifies Vishtaspa with "Ardashir" (see above), Ammianus' identification was once considered to substantiate the "traditional date" of Zoroaster.